This invention relates to a paper feeder, as called herein, for automatically successively feeding sheets of paper or of equivalents one by one. A paper feeder according to this invention is specifically suitable in supplying originals to a facsimile transmitter, a copying machine, or a like utilization device.
A conventional paper feeder for feeding sheet of paper to a utilization device successively one by one comprises a table on which sheets of paper are to be stacked, a feed roller between the table and the utilization device, first means for driving the roller in a first sense of rotation of feeding the paper from the table to the utilization device, a backwardly feeding belt movable generally above the roller along a circumferential area of the roller in contact with the area, second means for driving the belt in that second sense of drive at the area which is opposite to the first sense, and third means for supplying the stacked sheets to the area. The belt has a smaller coefficient of friction with respect to the paper than the roller. When the third means supplies the lowermost sheet to the area with one or more sheets superposed thereon, the belt feeds the superposed sheet or sheets back towards the table so as to insure only one sheet to be fed at a time by the feed roller. It is, however, not seldom that the superposed sheet or sheets are not reliably subsequently fed by the conventional paper feeder because the belt is liable either to turn over the leading edges of the superposed sheets or to partially raise the superposed sheets upwards from the underlying lowermost sheet.